INN has an interesting item about former Nahal Haredi soldiers.
Graduates of the Nahal Haredi army division are working on an initiative of establishing their own communities and neighborhoods based on groups of haredim who have similarly gone through army service via Nahal Haredi.
According to the report, the founder of the initiative, Yitzchak Atlas, says that it is important for haredim who served in the army to also live together later. This is so for financial reasons - as a way of putting together purchase groups in Jerusalem, Bet Shemesh and elsewhere (and thereby achieve better pricing), and also for social reasons. With such people having gone through similar experiences and often sharing similar backgrounds, they prefer to live together with other people sharing those similar experiences and backgrounds.
This is very common in general, as groups of people establish neighborhoods of like-minded people. There is no reason they should not be any different. What i find interesting is that they all come from different places, different yeshivas, and after they share the army experience instead of going back to their "old lives", their "old friends" and try to re-integrate into their old social networks, they wish to remain with their army buddies. It makes perfect sense to me - after sharing what are surely life-altering experiences for a few years, they surely become closer with those friends and more distant from their old friends.
In addition, Atlas says that the haredim who serve in the army tend to become more nationalistic. He says this is the main difference between them and the regular haredi community. The haredim who served in the army honor Yom HaAtzmaut and Yom HaZikaron. Atlas adds that when they establish their own community, in the shul they build they will definitely say the tefilla for the welfare of the State of Israel.
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What curmudgeonly killjoys these "rabbis" must be.
ReplyDeleteWhat curmudgeonly killjoys these "rabbis" must be.
ReplyDeleteharedim who serve in the army tend to become more nationalistic
ReplyDeleteIt's more likely that haredim who are more nationalistic to begin with tend to serve inthe army.
ken yirbu. The Nahal Haredi, not the segregated neighborhoods.
ReplyDelete